


Definition of Home

by Echo (Lyrecho)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Lore Building, Mostly Akira centric, POV Multiple, Some slight P3/P4 references & cameos, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Wordcount: Over 20.000, headcanons abound, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-02 10:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10942269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Echo
Summary: Home. It's a tricky word, for Akira. It's an undefined place. He's not actually entirely sure he knows what it means - or at least, what it's meant to mean.And, truthfully...he's not as quite alone in that as he thinks.A year is a long time, even if it passes by quickly - more than enough time to discover what the definition of home actually is.|Tumblr||Twitter|





	1. Friends & Family

Thinking back on it, it must have started happening the moment his luggage arrived in a box sent by his mother - it was her handwriting scrawled in black sharpie over the cardboard, the characters of his name as familiar there as they had been on the flap of his childhood satchel - but it wasn't until a few weeks after his arrival, once the whole Kamoshida mess was behind them and he was settling into the swing of the metaverse and studying for exams that Akira realised: he smelt of coffee.

It had a been a hazy afternoon when he'd come across this epiphany, Chouno-sensei standing at the front of the classroom, her usually energetic voice a drone at the back of his mind. Ann shifted in front of him, trying to avoid a beam of late day sun streaking through the windows onto their row, her hair rippling like the air in Mementos against her back.

He blinked, but the sensation of the world being slightly off-kilter didn't disappear, even as he focused so hard on Ann and Ann alone that his eyes watered. It was something he'd always experienced, to his memory, this occasional detachment from the physical reality that surrounded him - part of why he'd taken so well to the metaverse, he supposed; it wasn't like he didn't have experience with the power and cruelty a mind could hold over reality.

Normally, the sensations - the episodes - passed fairly quickly, or at least quickly enough for no one to question his still silence as he made his way through them. Akira had always been quiet, and a fairly good student, so the teachers in his hometown had never seemed to felt the need to single him out. Here, though, he wasn't 'the quiet Kurusu boy.' He was the delinquent with a criminal record, and it seemed that every teacher here was out to catch him for not being perfect. Chouno-sensei hadn't called on him yet, but it was only a matter of time. He couldn't afford to space out; not here, not now. _Save it for Leblanc,_ he bargained with himself. _We'll go straight there after school and dissociate in bed._ They'd had plans to go to Mementos, true - but the others would understand.

"Hey, are you okay?" Morgana's voice, quiet and hissing, broke into his spiraling thoughts and offered him an anchor he desperately needed as he blinked again, refocusing on Ann's back as his vision swam, almost as blind as he would be if he hadn't put his glasses on that morning (he pressed hands to frames just to make sure he actually had). Ann heard him speak too, and the side profile of her face was concerned as she caught his eyes.

He shook his head at her - _no_ \- not a confirmation that he was feeling out of sorts, but a negation that he needed her to be concerned. _Focus on the lecture,_ he tried to communicate silently as he gave up the battle to keep looking like an attentive student and buried his face in his arms, crossed over his desk. Ann, angel that she was, angled in her seat in a way that mostly blocked him from Chouno-sensei's view. Hopefully, his delinquent reputation, as untrue and irritating as it was, would keep anyone from calling the teacher's attention to him as he gripped his forearms and tried desperately to stay in the present.

Normally, focusing on one person and one person alone was enough. The boy that had sat next to him in class when he was thirteen, his mother's shoulders as she stirred pots with her hair pulled back high and tight, his father's hands as he gestured and spoke over dinner. Tangible, physical, familiar things to outline over and over again in his mind until he'd memorized them in high definition.

Ann's back, her twin tails - they were a familiar sight as any of those, even after such a short time, and a more welcoming one then almost all three of them combined. _So why weren't they working?_

He breathed deep, ignoring how the frames of his glasses pressed into his face as he slammed his eyes shut and tried to focus on the darkness. He'd always felt more at home in the shade.

His world eclipsed into the barriers built around him by his arms - his breathing, the wool of his sleeves, the roasted scent of coffee soaked into each fiber.

Without even realising it at first, his shoulders slumped a little with relief. _Oh,_ he thought hazily, and took in another breath through his nose. The scent of Leblanc's house blend didn't go away. _I can smell home._

"Kurusu!" Chouno-sensei's voice could have come seconds or hours later. Either way, it smashed through tranquil darkness and Akira bolted upright, glad that this teacher at least wasn't fond of chalk dust on her fingers from throwing a piece at him. The smirk on her face, though, told him that she had no expectations of him being able to answer the question she had for him.

He swallowed, still slightly shaky and off center, and tried to draw strength from the concerned looks Ann, Morgana and Mishima sent his way.

(It wasn't until much later that he realised - in a moment of vulnerability, with nowhere else to turn to, he'd thought of Leblanc, and he'd thought of it as _home_.)

-x-

Home, for most of Akira’s life, had been Shinokawa – a small town about a day or so drive out of Tokyo. He’d lived there with his mother and father, in a normal house, going to a normal school. The only strange thing had been his family, really.

His mother, Alice, had been born in England like her parents before her, and had always been curious about the homeland of her grandparents – or at least, that’s what she had always told him. She’d been a dancer, aiming for The Royal Ballet, when she had met Hideki Kurusu; Akira’s father, studying overseas. He’d never been given the full story, but within a year they were married, and when his father had finished earning his credentials she had gone alongside him when he returned to Japan – and not even a year after that, they had welcomed his sister Eiko into the world.

Anything and everything Akira knew about Eiko came from small snippets of whispered stories, curled up with his mother in bed on Saturday mornings when dad was working but she wasn’t, early sunlight streaming in through thin curtains. Eiko hadn’t lived long, nowhere near long enough for Akira, born six years later, to have ever actually met her.

_It was a drunk driver_ , his mother had told him once, eyes distant and sad. _That’s why your father keeps pushing for harsher penalties for them._

A family lawyer, his father had no real business trying to push his way into other spheres of law - civil or criminal – but he was a determined man, and not the kind to let such small things stop him. So for most of his childhood, Akira’s father had come home to sleep and eat, and his mother had kept him close, taking him to the dance classes she taught with her, always, a dark fear in her eyes as if she looked at him and saw Eiko hovering over his shoulder.

For those first years of his life, home and school had been the same thing, and all under the supervision of his mother. She had taught him how to read as much English as she could alongside the Japanese he would have to know when he finally went to a proper school – but mostly, he learnt _dance_. Sitting in the corner of his mother’s studio when she taught, watching her move her body in rhythm to the music that came through the speakers: smooth jazz, delicate piano and frantic strings; the loose, flowing pastel of her skirt rippling around her like a wreath of silk.

Even though Shinokawa was only a small town, as close as it was to Tokyo it was far from _rural_ , and many people had come to his mother’s studio to take advantage of a classically trained foreign dance teacher. Alice Kurusu had mostly taught college age students, but when Akira had expressed interest in learning how to move and dance like she had, she’d made a very eager exception – she loved dance, of course, had loved it enough to pursue a position in one of the most renowned companies in the world before she’d fallen into a love even deeper than the one she held for dance, and seeing her son hold that same excitement in his eyes was one of her greatest dreams come true. Alongside those older students, Akira had learnt to stretch and move like his mother did – gracefully, completely in control.

They’d been happy like that, for a time. His father had never been quite pleased by the fact that his only child had yet to attend school as was required, but his mother, used to a far more lenient educational upbringing from her childhood in the western world, had been so cheerful about keeping Akira as ‘her little helper’ in her own classes that Hideki had let it slide. The last thing he’d ever wanted to do was upset Alice, after all.

Akira could still remember the moment that happiness ended in vivid, neon detail – like it had only happened a day ago, like it had been burned through his retinas into the matter of his mind. His mother had taken him out shopping – for what, he couldn’t even remember; it had been that unimportant. He had been running along the streets a little ways ahead of his mother – laughing, she’d called out to him to come back. She’d sounded happy, lightly teasing, and so Akira had thrown a grin over his shoulder, and hopped up onto the slightly raised walls lining the street to separate private housing from public space.

Walking backwards, he’d skipped his way along, smiling at his mother – _look at me; look what I can do!_ She’d been smiling too, a laugh coming out of her as she shook her head.

“Watch where you’re going, Akira!" She called out. "Keep your eyes forward, before you fall!"

Akira laughed again, and twirled, just to prove he could. "Don't worry, mum!" He called back. "I'll be fine!"

Tension showed around her eyes and her smile was tight, but she didn't let her expression of cheer falter. "Akira, enough," Alice said, and he paused - there was no denying his mother when she brought out that tone of voice. "Get off of that wall now, and come here."

He jumped down from his position - at least, that was what he meant to do. His mother's eyes went wide with horror as his foot caught on the rough brick of the wall, and he slipped sideways. The wall wasn't even a half meter raised off the ground, really - if he had fallen, and landed, he wouldn't have been hurt all that badly. But a mother's instincts are a funny thing, and Alice Kurusu was throwing herself forward to catch her son before logical thought ever even entered the equation.

It's just a shame that there were a set of stairs right by the path along where they had been walking, leading into the underground mall that was there destination - stairs made of grey concrete, hard and cold and unforgiving.

It was Alice's momentum that threw them down - her arms around Akira, pressing him tight against her chest, they fell, and every impact on a stair was a bruising pain that would have been much worse if Akira had not had his mother wrapped around him like a protective shield.

The fall could only have taken seconds, really, but it felt like forever. By the time movement had finally stopped and the world had ceased spinning, Akira ached all over.

Slowly, he pushed himself out of his mother's trembling arms.

Alice Kurusu was conscious, but it didn't look like she really wanted to be. Her eyes were glazed over in pain, and sweat shone on her brow, her limbs. The fine tremors that Akira had felt travelling through her arms, pressed against him - they were shivering all over her body. For a moment, he could only stare. His mother didn't seem to see him, her gaze a thousand miles away, and there was something so wrong about the picture before him that his mind had a difficult time translating it into reality. She was lying almost entirely still except for the trembling, her arms and legs limp in a way that didn't seem real - as if those limbs belonged to a doll and not a human. Even though she was sweating, she felt cold.

Akira remembered swallowing tight, holding back tears as he patted at her arms gently. Even as a child, he'd stood by his mother in her classes long enough to know that shaking an injured person was bad. "Kaa-san?" He'd called quietly. Her gaze had flickered up to meet his face briefly, but she didn't hold his gaze for long, and even when she did, there was barely any focus in it before her eyes slid away. No recognition showed in her face, and no sign that he heard any of his further calls, either.

Panicking now, Akira began to yell out for help. They were right at the entrance to an underground mall, after all - even in such a small town, someone would hear and come to help.

It was a few hours later that Hideki Kurusu burst into the emergency waiting area of the local hospital. The receptionist on duty was quick to hush him before he could cause a disturbance and direct him to his son, who sat quiet and still in one of the chairs lined up in a row along the wall.

Alice had been rushed into an emergency operating room, the receptionist said. When she had landed, the impact had done something to her hip, and the doctors were worried about her spine. Beyond that, there had yet to be any news.

Hideki bowed his head, and thanked the receptionist for her help. He asked that she keep him informed if any news came from a doctor or anything about Alice's condition changed, and then he joined his son in his silence, sitting beside him in one of those chairs.

They sat together like that, in unbroken silence, for close to five hours before a doctor came out to inform Hideki that there was nothing wrong with Alice's spine - she'd just gone into shock, and that was why she had been unresponsive. However, given the crushing injury dealt to the hip and side she had landed on, it was likely that Alice would never be able to dance the way she had before again. When the doctor said this, Hideki's jaw tightened, and he placed one hand on Akira's shoulder, as if to comfort him. "We can take her home then, yes?" He asked.

The doctor confirmed this with a short nod, and within the hour they were all piled up in Hideki's car and on their way back home. Akira, strapped in the back, watched his mother quietly. She sat in the front passenger seat and stared listlessly out of the window, her eyes dull. She was dressed in just plain hospital clothes, thin under the woolen blanket one nurse had thrown over her lap when they'd helped her gently into the car from the wheelchair she would have to use to move around until her hip fully healed, and she looked as if she should be cold - but also as if she didn't feel that cold that was surely biting at her. She looked...numb.

Once they pulled into the parking space of their apartment lot, Akira's father went round to his mother's side of the car and pulled her into his arms. Of course - the doctor's had said she shouldn't be on her feet until she'd healed; and had even told her to remain in bed for as long as possible.

"Akira," Hideki said. "Get your mother's wheelchair from the back of the car; you can carry it up."

Akira considered talking, opening his mouth to say yes - but his father's attention was no longer on him, turned towards his unresponsive mother once more, who had curled up against her husband's chest as if the block out the world, so he simply nodded mutely and hurried to do as his father had asked so the car could be locked.

For weeks, Alice Kurusu lay in bed, and Hideki Kurusu worked extra hours to make up for the lack of her income. Many of her students sent 'get well soon!' packages and visited briefly to keep her company for an afternoon.

Akira...he learned to be quiet. His mother no longer could stand hearing him be overly active around her - it always sent her into tears to hear music coming from his room and knowing he was practicing dance when she couldn't anymore; his father returned home late each evening and was always exhausted, and did not want to deal with the noise of a child around him when he needed to rest. Akira understood this. It was his fault his mother had been hurt in the first place, after all, even if they'd never said it, so the very least he could do was remain quiet for her sake.

He spent most of his days in the kitchen, sitting at the long counter with the tall seats pushed against it that his parents had used to sit at and share a drink at the end of each day. While there, he read and drew and tried to practice what knowledge of language his mother had shared with him while ignoring the various framed photos and certificates hanging on the wall - one of Eiko and his parents, all smiling, was positioned right next to his usual seat at the perfect height for it to be impossible for him to ignore it, and he always tried to keep his back angled at a way that even his peripheral vision wouldn't be able to see it in. It almost always felt like those smiles were accusations - and while he'd never known Eiko, she'd always felt like a very much 'alive' part of his life through his mother's stories of her; the last thing he had ever wanted to do was steal the happiness his family had known when Eiko had still lived away, especially when they had already suffered so much.

One night, his father came home to see him still sitting at the counter. He blinked, gaze hazy as if he was asleep on his feet while still awake, and stumbled his way across the room to collapse in the seat next to Akira. "You're reading?" He asked quietly.

Words wouldn't come when Akira tried to summon them - he'd barely spoken more than a few sentences a day since his mother's accident, and he'd learned that quiet was just the best way to keep himself from hurting his parents more. Words were sharp, and scary, and he didn't trust himself enough to let them come out of his mouth. Instead, he just nodded a quick 'yes' to his father's question.

For a moment, Hideki Kurusu stared at his son, and his expression was entirely unreadable. Then, he spoke. "You're going to school, Akira," he said. "I've got a friend to pull some strings - a local school will be letting you test in according to whatever level they figure you're at. You can't stay at home any longer, not when your mother can't actually look after you." He sighed, shoulders slumping, and Akira looked back down at his book, the characters on the page swimming with his vision. He held back on the tears, though, even as they burned at his eyes like acid. He didn't need to start crying just because his mother was being even further removed from him - it wasn't like he had seen her all that much since the accident, anyway. He simply nodded once more.

"I'm going to go tell your mother," his father said. "Can you handle dinner for yourself? I'm not very hungry tonight."

Since the accident, with his mother confined to bed rest, Akira's father had been placed in charge of meals. This meant that dinner had been made and eaten later than he was used to, since by the time his father got home it was usually long dark, but it had at least been there to eat. This was the first time his father hadn't at least put forward an effort (even if that effort was slightly cold instant ramen) and Akira blinked as he looked towards the kitchen cupboards, and tilted his head. His head barely poked over the sink. Still, he nodded once more, and was rewarded with a smile from his father, which made the whole situation seem worth it.

"Thank you, Akira," his father said. "You're a good young man."

For what felt like the first time in forever, Akira smiled.

-x-

"Hey."

Akira jumped to awareness as a voice sounded from right behind him - Sojiro, standing at his shoulder with one brow raised high. "You're flooding my kitchen," he said, with a pointed look at Akira's hands, and he realised that the sink he'd been filling up - so he could do the dishes - had long ago reached the limit of how much water it could actually hold. Quickly, biting back the curse that he would have hissed out had he been alone, Akira reached forward to shut off the tap and bowed his head apologetically as he turned to face Sojiro, taking note of the glossy, wet sheen of the tiles - the water that had overflown had spread almost to the counter.

He winced, and forced words out; Sojiro deserved more than his silence for this, especially considering all that he had put up with recently for Akira's sake just by inviting him into his home. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just -"

"Was a million miles away?" Akira jumped a little at the interruption, but Sojiro didn't sound upset - far from it, actually; he sounded almost amused. "I know that look you had on your face." He leant up against the sink next to Akira, apparently uncaring of the water that soaked into his shirt as his expression became sober. "Whatever you had on your mind seemed serious," he commented in a mild tone.

"Are you offering a listening ear?" Akira quipped. For some reason, words always came better to him if he'd already spoken to that person only a short time before - as if some sort of blanket permission to speak had been given that lifted a weight off of his shoulders.

Sojiro barked out a laugh. "You wish, kid," he said. "It's about time to close up, actually - I just wanted to make sure you didn't flood the place and end up drowning in your sleep if I just left." He looked Akira up and down, and under his gaze Akira fidgeted. "I'll share some advice with you though, kid: even if it seems like it, it's never the end of the world."

Akira blinked. "Where did that come from?"

"Years of aging," Sojiro said. "You learn things like that. Things that were big when you were a child are nothing important when you're a teenager, and once you hit adulthood, teenage problems fade away too. Some things linger, of course, but the older you get, the less their weight crushes you. Whatever's going on in your head, kid, it's far from the end of the world - and you would do well to try and remember that, before you go ahead and let it crush you."

Slowly, Akira nodded. He wasn't sure how Sojiro had known he had his family on his mind when he'd been so successful at not thinking on them or mentioning them even once since his arrival in Tokyo - or even if Sojiro knew that it was his family he had been thinking on in the first place - but somehow, in some way he couldn't quite put his finger on, his words had helped. "Thank you," he said genuinely.

Sojiro just nodded, and pushed himself away from the sink, his tone all business once more. "Well, I'm off. Clean up that water before you go to bed, and finish off the dishes. Make sure to lock up the store, too, and don't get back too late if you decide to go out."

Akira nodded, and with one final searching look, as if judging the truth of said nod, Sojiro left, the door swinging shut behind him. Akira heard the chime of the bell above the door as he turned back to his sink full of water and dirty plates - sighed, and reached for a cloth.

"You were a million miles away," Morgana said, and Akira felt a smile tug at his lips as his friend leapt deftly up to the bench next to the sink, winding his way delicately around the tray of used mugs and teacups also balanced there. He wouldn't have dared to ever do that if Sojiro were still around, and so the fact that he felt safe in doing it meant they were definitely alone. Even if only a tiny, small amount, Akira felt himself relax.

Morgana's eyes on him felt almost too knowing as he watched his shoulder's slump, the faint tension Akira always had thrumming through his body around people just melting away. Still, it couldn't be helped, and Morgana, at least, wouldn't go running off to tell this secret of his to anyone - wouldn't be able to, even if he had wanted to, since outside of Akira, only Ann and Ryuji would understand him. "Even if the chief isn't in the mood to hear you talk, I'm of the opinion that you spend far too much time silent, anyway," Morgana stated archly. "Whatever it is that's bothering you, you can tell me."

His voice was earnest, and for a moment Akira honestly considered just telling him the truth - but finally shook his head, 'no.'

"It's nothing, really," he said, even as Morgana stared at him with something Akira could only call a frown of disappointment - how did he even do that; he was a cat. "I was just...thinking about my family."

Morgana's tail, which had been swishing behind him, slowed and then stilled. "You moved out here away from them, right?" He said, uncertainty clear in his voice. "I'm...not quite sure of the full story."

No, Akira doubted that he knew the full story - no one did, after all, outside of him. But Morgana escorted him to school every day and wasn't in his desk for every second of it - at least, he had heard the rumours that had surrounded Akira since his arrival to Shujin.

"I caused some trouble for my parents when I got the mark on my record," he said, keeping his words as purely truthful as he could without delving too deep into the past. "My father works in family law, not criminal - but he has some friends in that area, and he called in some favours to get me put under probation with a vetted guardian, rather than spend my year of probation in juvenile detention. Because of that, I have caused my parents a lot of stress as my father tries to carry out his end of the deals he made to get me here. I...I haven't heard from them since I got to Tokyo," Akira admitted, trying not to let the hurt he was surprised to actually feel at that show. "But there's also a part of me that's glad they haven't called, because I don't want to risk them finding out that I'm risking everything they've put on the line to keep me out of jail by running around as a Phantom Thief." He let out a humourless laugh. "It's ridiculous, I know, but I can't help but feel they'd hear it in my voice, somehow."

Morgana's tail is swishing once more, agitated. He's almost glaring at Akira, from the looks of it. "You know, for a smart guy, you can be almost as dumb as Ryuji." His words and tone are light, but the look he's sending Akira isn't. "If you want to talk to your parents, then call them yourself. The worst that can happen is that the phone call goes badly."

Akira stared at Morgana flatly. "Exactly," he said, and Morgana shook his head.

"No, no, no!" He yelled out, and Akira briefly wondered what the people outside were hearing. "It's not like they'll be here to actually yell at you, you idiot! Every thief knows that you bail out when the waters start rising and a phone call is the perfect way to do that! If things start going downhill, you can just hang up on them! And if they ask you later why you did that, you can just say that your connection must have been bad since it cut off! It's a win-win situation, and you never have to deal with any blame or fallout from it!" Morgana's eyes burned with some sort of determined fire. "They're your family, Akira. Don't you miss your home?"

Akira paused, hands stilling in the motion of rubbing suds over a plate in a circular motion. "I don't know," he said truthfully. "I'm not sure I even know where home is, anymore."

Morgana cocked his head to one side. "We're the same in that regard, then," Morgana said sadly. "But unlike you, I don't even remember if I ever had a home in the first place." He glared at Akira. "Since you do, you should make the most of it, don't you think?" With that, he jumped off of the bench and headed for the stairs that led to their shared attic room - and before Akira could even begin to think of a response, he was gone from view.

-x-

The next morning, Ann's greeting smile to Akira as she walks up to him at the station is twisted into a frown as Morgana jumps out of Akira's bag to manoeuvre his way into hers - "Hey! Morgana," she hissed out, but didn’t try to force him out of her bag, her gaze furtive as she looks all around them to make sure no one has heard or seen the brief commotion their feline friend just set off. She looked towards Akira, creases of what he can only presume to be worry forming between her eyes. "Is he okay?" She asked.

Akira shrugged. He isn't quite sure what to say to her that won't get him a look of pity, so he simply said: "We had a bit of a fight last night."

Ann, thankfully, is the kind of friend to trust in him and just take his words at face value - or at least let him come to her with the truth in his own time rather than try to wheedle it out of him. She rolled her eyes, and hoisted her bag up on her shoulder higher. "Well, I don't mind you hanging out in my desk for today, Morgana," she said. "But you're still going to have to go home with Akira tonight." From inside Ann's bag, Morgana makes a drawn out grumbling sound that is the closest Akira has heard to an actual cat noise coming from him, and both he and Ann exchange amused looks just as Ryuji runs up to them, panting slightly. His leg looks as if it's moving more stiffly than the day before, and Akira's faint smile of amusement fades away as he wonders if his leg is bothering him more than usual.

"'Sup," Ryuji grinned through hard breathing, bent over nearly in two with his hands resting on his knees. "How are we all this fine morning?"

Ann smiled in greeting. "Ready to find our next target," she said quietly. "It's been long enough, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Ryuji agreed as he straightened. "Much longer and people will forget we exist altogether."

"That would lessen the impact of a calling card on someone who didn't already know us personally," Ann pointed out. "Kamoshida reacted like he did because he already knew you were after him; he probably consciously thought the calling card was you two pulling a prank. If we want to make sure it's effective on someone we don't know, though, it would be best to go for a Palace's Treasure while we are still all over the news."

Akira blinked at Ann, and a quick glance at Ryuji showed he was just as surprised as Akira himself, mouth wide open.

"Holy shit," Ryuji said, and his voice was low and full of a genuine awe. "You know, you play up that dumb blonde act so well sometimes it's easy to forget you can be kind of a genius."

"I am not a dumb blonde!" Ann hissed at him, cheeks flaming. "And how hypocritical is that? You're blond too, in case you haven't noticed!"

Ryuji shrugged. "Well, yeah, but I bleach my hair," he said. "That makes me a delinquent, not an idiot."

"No, it makes you both," Ann snapped. "I'm surprised you have any brain cells left, given that the bleach you pour on your skull must have soaked through your head to kill them all."

Akira's smiling once more as they board the bus, Ann and Ryuji sniping barbs at each other that sound venomous but he can tell are all in good fun, and from Ann's bag, he could swear he heard Morgana chuckle.


	2. Party & Preperation

Akira isn't really sure if he can call encountering Yusuke Kitagawa mere random chance, but he isn't quite ready to say fate is definitely a thing he believes in, either - either way, though, they have their next target, even if three out of the four of them aren't entirely sure what to do with that information.

Morgana's ire towards him had faded as quickly as it had appeared, and to Akira's relief, he is no longer being ignored when they gather for conversations (it could, of course, have something to do with the fact that Akira is the one who feeds him, but he'd like to believe that Morgana is just that forgiving at heart).

"I don't get what you're all so conflicted about," Morgana said, looking up from where he's been licking daintily at one paw while the three of them dance around the subject of what, exactly, they're going to do. "He has a Palace. Clearly, no matter how nice he acts, Madarame is no ordinary human."

Ann's voice is hesitant, her eyes downcast. "But does that mean he's necessarily evil?" She asked. "Having a Palace just means you're distorted, right? A distortion...it doesn't really need to be a bad thing."

Morgana sat up, and stared directly at Ann. "That's true," he said. "But can you tell me that you honestly felt as if that Palace was the heart of a misguided man?"

"...no," Ann said quietly. "I want to say otherwise - but I can't, not honestly."

"Exactly." Morgana nodded sagely, and glanced a look between all three of them. "I know it's hard to see through the masks people present sometimes, but that's really all the current Madarame is. That gaudy gallery is his true self, and we can't let ourselves forget that because he seems nice here. This world is full of lies and disguises."

"The metaverse might be ugly, but at least it's truthful, eh?" Ryuji muttered, and ran a hand through his hair. He sighed, and glanced between them all when he looked up, his gaze finally falling to rest on Akira. "What are we gonna do about Kitagawa, then?" He asked.

A small part of Akira wished they would stop looking to him for answers he wasn't sure he could provide. Another, larger part was glad, so glad, they didn't ignore him like his parents did. "We should talk to him," he said finally.

"Again?" Morgana asked. "Why waste more time on that when we already know what we need to do?"

Akira stared for a moment, and wondered how best to communicate what he was feeling – if he’d grown up with Madarame watching over him, then Yusuke couldn’t have had much control over his life, no matter what he perceived of the matter. Cognition was delicate and easily manipulated, after all – if there was one thing he’d learnt from the metaverse it was _that_. As someone who had also had all true agency removed from his life like it didn’t matter – like _he_ didn’t matter – he didn’t want to wrest that same control from someone else who probably needed whatever small amount of it they could lay claim to. “It’s his life, and his sensei,” he said finally. “He should get a say in what happens to him.”

Ann and Ryuji pipe up with agreement – maybe remembering how Kamoshida was the same sort of personal for them that Madarame would be for Yusuke, maybe just still not sure if they can really justify in their own hearts digging around in the world of an old man’s – and Akira feels himself relax a little. The call him ‘leader,’ and even if it’s barely even an honorary title meant to make him the tiebreaker, or something, having them listen to him like he’s actually the one with some semblance of control over the situation is nice.

Of course then Mishima contacts him about a former pupil of Madarame that wants to meet up with them and request a change of heart in a person – it’s Nakanohara, the same guy that they’d gone up against on that first visit to Mementos, and Akira can only stare for a moment at the meek, uncertain attitude that is so unlike the guy’s Shadow that it’s hard to believe that distortion came from this person.

Huh. Maybe Morgana is right, and this world is the one that’s harder to tell truth from lie in.

With knowledge that Madarame’s distortion had led to the death of his students in the past (suicide; the same fate that had nearly taken Shiho Suzui, and they all reach out to place a comforting hand somewhere on Ann – she grips them back tightly for a moment, holding Akira’s and Ryuji’s hands in her own firmly) and express permission given by someone who is personally involved in the whole mess, they no longer feel as weird about their plan to trigger a change of heart in the artist as they had been before.

Akira still wants to talk to Yusuke about it a bit, and he can tell Ann, at least, feels the same –

But there’s no time to waste, and after making quick plans, they’re opening the app, and heading straight back into Madarame’s palace; their goal to find the Treasure.

-x-

Yusuke Kitagawa awakening to a Persona is among the top of the list of things Akira could never have imagined happening, but by now he's learnt to just roll with whatever punches life throws his way. Besides, now that he's not being so overtly hostile, that faint arrogant disdain he'd shown towards Akira and Ryuji having drained out of him, he's actually quite pleasant to be around - all of the soothing calm Ann and Ryuji bring him with far less of the noise.

Yusuke was like Morgana, Akira realised, and smiled faintly at the image of him with cat ears perched atop his head - with his Phantom outfit he already had a tail, after all, and it even was capable of movement; Akira had watched him use it as a balance to steady himself in battle with, and seen it wag with excitement whenever he picked the lock off of a chest.

He wondered briefly, if the openness Yusuke exhibited towards them now was _due_ to his awakening of Goemon – since tearing Arsene’s mask from his face, Akira himself had felt that something within him had changed…or at least, that something that had existed solely ‘within’ him had now made its way out (admittedly, in a less physical way than Arsene himself had). He’d seen that same change ripple through Ann and Ryuji, he felt – like they’d become more assured of themselves, of their place in the world, by finding and releasing the physical manifestation of their true inner selves.

He rolled over in his bed, the blanket he’d tossed haphazardly across his middle moving with him and slipping to the floor. He paid it no mind as he squinted at Morgana, still sitting across the room from what his blurry vision could make out (he’d left his glasses by his bag). Akira wasn’t sure why, exactly, Morgana tried most nights to keep up the ruse of sleeping on the couch or table when he already _knew_ he’d be slinking into his bed once he’d drifted off, but didn’t bother to question him. His friend was _slippery_ when it came to answering questions he felt came off as accusations of his noble character.

“Hey, Morgana,” he said, voice quiet. Sojiro had already been gone when he’d returned from their scouting of Madarame’s palace that evening, but something about the atmosphere of Leblanc at night made Akira reluctant to make noise. “Have you always had Zorro?”

Without his glasses, Morgana is barely even a black, vaguely cat-shaped blob on the table across the room, so if anything about his body language is agitated Akira can’t really tell, but when he speaks, his voice is calm. “For as long as I can remember, at least,” he said. “Which, as you know, isn’t really all that much.” There’s a sigh in his voice as he speaks, and the blob seems to flatten down against the table – Morgana lying down and resting his head on his paws.

Akira makes a humming noise as he rolls once more onto his back, and the ceiling above him is just as blurry as the rest of the room. To be quite honest, he’s almost thankful for that. Between Kamoshida, Madarame, and trying to keep his grades up and help Sojiro out in the café so neither the school nor his guardian see any reason to kick him out, he hasn’t exactly had the time on his hands to be cleaning his room out properly. The ceiling is something he hasn’t touched at all since his arrival, and if the rest of the room had been any evidence, there had to be at layer of dust at _least_ an inch think caked over it. It’s horrible to think about breathing that in, but as long as he can’t really see it, he supposes, he can pretend it isn’t there.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I –” He paused. “I’ve felt different since I awakened to my Persona,” he said. “I’m just…not too sure if that’s all in my head, or not.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Morgana said. “Your Persona is an aspect of yourself; realising it means accepting a part of yourself that you previously kept hidden under the mask you showed to society. Why wouldn’t you feel different?”

Akira blinked. “That makes sense,” he said. “I mean, as much sense as anything else.”

Morgana made a faint grumbling sound that sounded as if he was drifting off into sleep – whether he was really going to sleep on the table or was trying to convince Akira to hurry up and go to sleep so he could sneak over to his mattress a lot more subtly than most nights, he wasn’t sure, but he definitely had the right idea. If everything panned out like they’d planned, they’d be sending the calling card tomorrow, after all. It would be best to get as much sleep for the actual Treasure stealing as he possibly could.

(As if summoned by his thoughts, just before he sunk fully into sleep, Akira could have sworn he heard Arsene laugh.)

-x-

Ann awoke to her phone buzzing on her bedside table – not her alarm, set to go off with just enough time to get dressed and get to school, but the chiming tone of a message received. She let out a groan, and reached for the phone as she buried her face in her pillow, resisting the urge to scream. If it was Ryuji texting her, she’d set him on fire the next time they entered the Metaverse.

Carmen smirked in the back of her mind, lips curling up like smoke, and the laughter that echoed out was a smug, amused promise. Ann smiled too, the corners of her lips turning up in something resembling happiness at an hour when she didn’t usually feel it, given that she was asleep.

Her parents, she saw, when she finally turned her head to glare at the screen. For such prolific travellers, they sure had a habit of forgetting time zones where a thing. Where even were they, currently? Were they even on the same side of the equator as her?

Didn’t matter in the end, she supposed, and pushed herself up so she was sitting with her back against the wall. It was just the usual updates – amenities had been paid, they were happy she was keeping her grades up, they’d seen a few of her modelling shoots and were proud of the portfolio she was building up so well at such a young age; even in text form, it was like having her mother babble at her from right over her shoulder – her voice coming to Ann’s mind as clear as day.

She messaged back the usual reassurances from her end – she was eating right, making sure that none of her jobs weren’t on the level, was keeping away from ‘the wrong crowd’ (that last one may have been _slightly_ untrue, but what Kyo Takamaki didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her).

Her replies sent through within seconds, and Ann exited her messaging app, locking her phone once more and tossing it down on the mattress with a thump. She sighed, and for a brief moment, wished that Morgana was staying with her, and not Akira. She…hated being lonely.

Anger flared from within her, Carmen somehow baring her teeth through a pout, and Ann let out a breath as her shoulders slumped and she realised – she wasn’t really alone. Not now. And never again, since awakening to her Persona.

And…even if she _was_ alone, Carmen’s presence, strong and proud within her, like a second spine of fire and steel, told her all that she needed to know: she was stronger than her own loneliness.

(Though Carmen also whispered something else to her, as she dressed in her uniform and made her way to the train station – though she didn’t need anyone to combat her own loneliness, having people by her side made life a hell of a lot better.)

-x-

The train that morning was busy – as it was every morning, Akira supposed, but something about the way he was almost bodily pressed up against the doors of his train car by every other person on it had him tense and sweating. He’d never really had a problem with claustrophobia, or personal space – and in Tokyo, you couldn’t exactly afford to pay such things any mind if you wanted to retain your sanity – but every time an elbow dug too hard into his back he flinched, prepared to whirl around to tear a mask from a shadow’s face before he remembered where he was. The difference of the air and atmosphere between the ‘real’ world and the Metaverse should have been obvious, especially by now, but after so many weeks Arsene and the myriad of other Personas he had gathered had settled pretty much completely within him, and with their presences always hovering somewhere near the edge of his mind, it had become harder than he had ever thought it could be to distinguish reality from…well, _warped_ reality.

He sighed - mostly in relief - as the automated sound of the announcers voice came over the train's speaker system with the alert they were approaching his stop; never before had he been so glad to stumble out of the opening doors.

It took him a moment to reorient himself as he discovered his balance once more on solid ground, prudently stepping past the yellow line before making his way to the platform where he met up with Ann and Ryuji for his next connection. After all, with so many accidents happening recently, it was hard not to have them on his mind every time he stepped into a train, and caution was always better than the careless thought of 'as if something like that could happen to me.' The sheer, mindless apathy of the entire Kamoshida situation, of their current fight against Madarame...that sort of self absorbed thinking led down dark paths.

Persona users can't have a Palace, Morgana had said, because their cognition of their inner selves wasn't a world they ruled in, but of their strongest, true self - the reflection of them that waited to be realised in the cognitive sea of the Metaverse. And since learning what really lay under the elaborate, ornate facades of the two Palaces Akira had been in so far, just knowing that Arsene and all the rest that had come to him protected him from ever falling to such a fate brought him great relief.

(There was a part of him that couldn't help but wonder: but what if a Persona user becomes distorted? However, it was only a very faint part, speaking up in a small voice, and Morgana had no reason to lie. Therefore, Akira had no reason to worry.)

"Yo." Ryuji grinned at him as he looked up, drawn out of his thoughts by the greeting and the arm slung casually over his shoulder. Unlike the crowd on the train, Ryuji's presence next to him, the warmth pressed up against him, was very welcome. No sense of threat came from having an arm looped around his neck, dragging him bodily against the chest of another person and through the station - just a vaguely exasperated feeling of fond amusement. "Cat," Ryuji added with a look towards Akira's bag.

"It's Morgana!" Was Morgana's own hissing reply, snapped out before Akira could free an arm from Ryuji's grip to stop him from talking.

"I haven't paid the pet fees or upgraded my card," he whispered. "No talking; we can't risk anyone hearing you."

Ryuji grinned, and Morgana made a faint grumbling sound Akira was almost certain no one else would be able to hear.

“Seen Ann yet?” Ryuji asked, lips still turned up in that infectious smile, and Akira could feel laughter bubble up in his chest for pretty much no reason as he shook his head; _no_.

“She’ll be around somewhere,” he said, quietly confident and assured of that fact, and Ryuji tilted his head in agreement.

“Better hurry, though,” he said, eyeing the neon filled screens that ran the length of the station walls, timetables flicking through at a speed faster than Akira’s crappy eyesight could pick up outside of the Metaverse. “Hell, _we_ had better hurry – we’ve got like five minutes.”

“That’s plenty of time,” Akira said, but didn’t protest as the arm around him tightened and began to pull him across the station faster, towards the destination of their final connection before school; the train just pulling in to a stop as they reached the crowd waiting behind the yellow line.

“Yeah, whatever, just get on,” Ryuji said, nudging him through the open doors and craning his head over the crowd. “I can’t see her freaking anywhere. She texted you at all?”

Akira shook his head as he stepped onto the train proper, knowing the answer without even checking. “No one has, not since last night.”

Faint worry flickered across Ryuji’s face, before he shook his head and settled up against the wall of the train car they were in, reaching up one hand to grasp at the bar that ran the length of it for balance. “Well, maybe she headed in early,” he said. “Modelling jobs can have weird hours, right?”

Akira stared at him. “How would I know?”

Ryuji shrugged. “I don’t know, man. Ann likes to talk to you, so like, maybe she mentioned something?”

“Well, she hasn’t,” he said. “Either I’ll see her in class, and I can just ask her why she didn’t turn up, or we can message the group chat to see if she’s okay.”

Ryuji hummed out an agreement, and scowled as he stumbled back into Akira as a woman’s bag swung into him – he rolled his eyes as he caught his footing. “People on these trains,” he hissed, but not loud enough for the woman in question to hear him over the ambient noise of the train car. “I mean like, there’s no way you can just forget there are all these people around you with how we’re crowded in; you think they’d be a bit more aware of their surroundings.”

Akira laughed faintly, and shook his head. The ride to school was barely fifteen minutes – walkable if they were willing to drag themselves out of bed about an hour earlier than usual – but it always felt as if an endless age was passing by the moment those doors closed shut with a warning beep. It was almost the same sensation that Mementos gave off – that of an in-between place full of suffering. And, well, he didn’t know of any place out there full of more suffering than the Tokyo Transit system.

“Be strong, Ryuji,” he said.

-x-

It turned out that Ryuji’s suggestion had been very right – for whatever reason, Ann had left home and caught an earlier (though likely not any less busy) train that day, and from the brightness of her smile and the genuine warmth in her eyes when he nodded a hello to her, Akira figured there wasn’t actually anything _wrong_ with her, and so let his worry go.

Slipping into his seat, he opened his bag under his desk to allow Morgana to slide in as surreptitiously as he could, and Ann turned so she was facing him.

“Morning,” she said, one hand playing absentmindedly with her hair, fluffing it out in a motion Akira’s eyes were almost automatically drawn to. “I was talking to Kitagawa-kun, and I think that before we send the calling card, we should make sure he knows one hundred percent what he’s getting into.” A sheepish grin. “I mean, we have time, right? No real reason to throw him straight into the deep end like we were.”

“I guess not,” Akira agreed. “What were you thinking?”

“ _Well_ …” She dragged the word out. “I know we should probably get some studying done at some point, considering how _some_ of us just barely scraped a passing exam grade, but maybe for this afternoon at least, we could head into Mementos? Do we have any outstanding requests on the forums?”

Akira didn’t even blink at the allegation that one of them had nearly failed their exam – he himself had scored pretty averagely and it wasn’t like Ryuji had made any secret of his ‘just high enough to score a passing grade’ result – but frowned slightly at Ann’s question.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said, and slid his gaze across the room, to Yuki Mishima’s still currently empty desk. “I’ll ask at lunch if Mishima has heard anything. He seems to keep a closer eye on the Phan-Site than any of us.”

Ann nodded her agreement. “I’ll hit up Ryuji, then,” she said. “For all his occasional idiocy, he’s been really smart about finding us targets.” She paused as she made to turn back to the front of the classroom. “Don’t tell him I said that,” she warned, and Akira bit back a grin as he nodded as solemnly as he could.

In his desk, Morgana let out a hiss and Akira studiously ignored him, even as the students piling into the room one by one – the girl who sat next to him and her friend in front of her, the boy that sat behind him – let out a giggle and sent him a knowing look. It seemed that, as much as his reputation as a ‘dangerous, violent criminal’ had permeated the entire campus, the vast majority of class 2-D had come to realise that he wasn’t quite the person that the rumours had painted him to be, helped along by the cat that had made its home in his desk – Morgana hadn’t been happy with the fact that Akira’s classmates seemed to think of him as some cute, secret mascot he kept in his desk, but the fact that the faint lingering fear left over from the uncertainty of whether or not they actually _knew_ he wasn’t a dangerous criminal kept them from crowding around the desk and trying to pat Morgana.

“I won’t say a word,” he promised.

-x-

“Oh – Kurusu.” Mishima blinked, and even though he smiled, there was a faint nervous energy tangible around him. “Can I…help you?”

For a moment, Akira could only stare – it was, perhaps, a bit stupid of him to have walked over to do this in person when he could have just _texted_ Mishima – but, well, he hadn’t thought of that, and he was already there, with Mishima looking at him expectantly, alongside the rest of their classmates that had stayed in the room for their lunch period; walking back to his seat now and pulling out his phone would just summon unwanted attention to him (more than it already was; he could feel the eyes of his classmates fixed on him with an unwavering, burning curiosity).

“Actually, yeah,” he started, feeling Morgana shift impatiently in his bag. Mishima’s eyes flicked down to track the movement of said bag. “I was wondering if we could talk?” He wasn’t quite sure if he was imagining it or not, but it was as if the heat of his classmates laser focused stares were burning right through him, because he could have sworn he felt sweat drip down the back of his neck as he waited for Mishima to answer him.

“Um, sure?” Mishima’s voice came out questioning, but he was already reaching for his bag and pushing back from his desk and rising from his chair. “Do you mind if we stop by the school store, then?”

Wordlessly, Akira shook his head, and hitched his bag up higher on his shoulder – every time Morgana moved inside it, its weight was thrown off uncomfortably on his back. Each night ended with aches all over his body that his history with dance and gymnastics told him he should stretch out, and at this rate, he was going to have a hunchback by thirty.

An image of Igor hunched over his warden’s desk flashed briefly into his mind as if summoned by his fleeting thoughts, and Akira shuddered, desperately trying to blank his mind of such a comparison – it was truly that horrifying. Though…he hadn’t visited the velvet room since their first visit to Madarame’s Palace; he was honestly slightly afraid of that place – mostly because of the wardens. Caroline and Justine, even more so than their ‘master,’ gave of a vibe that was just… _disturbing_. Still, whatever it was they wanted from him, the aid they gave him was truly more than just ‘helpful.’ If they were really planning to head into Mementos, it would probably be for the best if he went to see what fusions were available to him.

Arsene snarled faintly in his mind as he absentmindedly followed Mishima through the halls to the school store, dodging around other students – and Akira barely held back from rolling his eyes. It had made him feel a bit strange, at first, to have a part of his psyche feel like such a separate person, separate being – but Morgana had assured him, all of them, that yes, their Personas were very much an aspect of their own existence. Arsene’s pride and potential for wrath – it didn’t feel like any part of himself Akira was familiar with, but by now he knew better than to doubt something like that just because of a _feeling_.

 _Relax,_ he thought. _I’m not going to fuse **you**_.

Mishima returned, his hands full of cheap pre-packaged bread – the sweet kind. “Here,” he said, and offered one to Akira.

Part of him wanted to protest, but his mother’s English upbringing – polite though it was – had come with different values to his decidedly more Japanese one, and some of those lessons had rubbed off on him. So, he simply accepted to offered food with a nod of thanks.

“So…” Mishima gave him a slightly shaky smile. “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

They had never in so many words confirmed the fact that they were the Phantom Thieves to Mishima, but at this point it was more about plausible deniability than anything. Still, he tried to keep his words as vague as possible when he spoke. “There’s so much activity on the Phan-Site recently that it’s hard to read through the forums.” He tilted his head. “Any entries actually worth paying attention to?”

Mishima blinked, and his hesitant, shaky smile became something slightly warmer. “Er, yeah,” he said. “There are a few…I was going to send them through to you later, once I’d made sure they weren’t people just trying to get attention or pull a prank. But…I could just send them through anyway?”

Akira nodded once. “That would be helpful, thank you,” he said. He unwrapped the sweet bread with a tug, and took a bite of it.

Mishima shook his head. “Well, I’m glad to be of help,” he said, and hoisted his bag up over his shoulder. “And I mean like, anytime. I’m always ready and available to help the Phantom Thieves!”

Determination glinted in his eyes as he stared back at Akira, and Akira smiled around his mouthful of sweet bread. It was…cute, almost. “I’m sure the Phantom Thieves are thankful for that,” he said blandly. “You know, we should really get back to class.”

“Oh, uh – yeah,” Mishima said. “Lunch period is nearly over, huh?” He blinked at Akira. “Come on, let’s get back.”

-x-

Akira could have sworn he felt eyes fixated on his back as he made his way through Shibuya to the entrance to the Velvet Room that was placed by Iwai’s shop. He tried to brush it off – since coming to Tokyo, he’d grown used to the sensation of being watched; both because people around the school apparently had never learned that staring was rude, and because there were just so many people crowded onto the streets that it was pretty much impossible to not have someone at least glancing at you at any one time.

Still, he couldn’t fight the urge to periodically glance back over his shoulder and scan the crowd to see if he could meet the eyes of anyone that happened to be looking directly his way.

“Hmm?” Morgana hummed as Akira looked back once more, the movement jostling him in the bag. A bit of pressure against his side, and then Morgana’s head was poking out of the bag. “What is it, Akira?” His ears flicked, as if hearing something that Akira couldn’t. “What do you see?”

“It’s more what I _don’t_ see,” Akira muttered, and summoned up a smile as he looked down at his friend. “Don’t worry about it.”

Morgana looked up at him and stared for a moment, and Akira wished that cats had more obvious facial features to read. His eyes just looked blank, and were slightly unnerving with how fixated they were on his own. “A Phantom Thief should trust their instincts,” Morgana said. “Or do you really think that everything you’ve learnt is only useful in a Palace?”

For a moment, Akira paused, hovering right at the edge of the alleyway that led to Iwai’s shop and the Velvet Room. From where he stood, he could even see the faint wavering glow of blue that surrounded the phantom door. To be completely honest, he hadn’t really considered any of what he’d learnt – what Morgana had taught him and what Arsene had whispered in the back of his mind – in anything close to a real world setting. It was easier that way. The Metaverse was the Metaverse and what happened there _stayed_ there. If he let those lines blur – then it was just like it had been the other week, staring at Ann’s back in class and desperately trying to keep mind and body as one whole existence.

“So, what you’re saying is…if I feel like I’m being watched…” he trailed off, and Morgana’s eyes narrowed.

“Then you probably are,” he said, and scanned the area and crowd once more with a new alertness. “I’m not seeing anyone specific stand out, though.”

“…it doesn’t feel dangerous?” He said, his voice lilting into a question without his permission. “I mean, not like strong shadows do.”

“Humans don’t have to feel strong to be dangerous,” Morgana said sagely. “And in this world, the worst dangers rarely come in the form of combat – if someone’s watching you, it isn’t because they want to _fight_ you, Akira.”

Akira blinked. _Of course_ , he thought. For all that he’d told himself to keep the Metaverse and the real world separate, there were still places where that got confused, apparently – if he was so stressed because he had been expecting whoever was watching him to attack him, then his head was obviously still a bit too stuck in the Metaverse.

He shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts, and glanced back down at Morgana. “I guess we can’t really do anything about it for now, though,” he said.

“Hmmm, no, not really,” Morgana agreed with a hum. “For now, just stay alert.”

Akira gave a short nod, and made to walk down the alley, to the Velvet Room that was his initial destination. As Justine looked up from her clipboard at him with what he could only call a disinterested look in her one visible golden eye, she opened up the barely there, seemingly intangible door, and gestured for him to enter, clearly planning to follow him in. He could honestly only feel glad and relieved that it was her, and not Caroline, that was standing guard on that specific day. While neither of the wardens of the Velvet Room were exactly ‘friendly,’ Justine, at least, didn’t make a habit of _kicking_ him through the door.

He nodded to her in greeting and stepped easily into the seemingly empty space beyond the door no one but him could see – not even Morgana, and Akira still hadn’t figured out what, exactly, his friends thought of what happened to him in those few times he was in a world that was neither their own or the Metaverse. Considering that any mention of Igor or what happened in the Velvet Room would get him raised eyebrows at best, there was no way he could even try to explain the truth.

He blinked, and the nothingness around him wasn’t nothingness anymore – and nor was he standing, or walking. As always, he was lying down on what one could generously call a bed if they were in a giving mood, with chains clapped around his ankles. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, drawing one knee up to his chest, and met Caroline’s one smirking eye with as bland of a look as he could summon.

“What’s that look for, inmate?” Her voice was a snap, and Akira bit back a sigh. He just couldn’t _win_ with these girls, for all that he could feel their bond growing stronger each time he completed a task for them. “You have no reason to be feeling so smug. You’re still not any closer to completing your rehabilitation!” She scowled at him, and crossed both arms over her chest. Akira could only feel relief that she wasn’t ramming her electric baton of doom into the bars again. It was honestly terrifying when she did that.

Justine’s carefully blank face made it seem that she paid her – sister? – no mind, but she spoke up as she always did when Caroline’s anger started to get her voice rising higher in volume, gently pulling their attention back to the task at hand and away from each other. “Have you come to request a fusion from our master?” She asked, and held up the clipboard she held. “Or are you here to complete our next request?”

“We have _way_ more tasks left for you to work through, inmate!” Caroline grinned. “Don’t think you’re anywhere _near_ done.”

“I just want to fuse some personas,” he said to Igor, meeting his eyes and…fairly unsettling grin directly through the bars. Igor’s grin widened, and he tilted his head in acknowledgement.

“Girls,” he said, his voice deep and echoing. “Help our guest with his rehabilitation.”

Caroline looked towards Akira expectantly. “You heard him, inmate!” she snapped. “Get over here and make a selection from the list!”

“Be aware of your limits,” Justine warned. “If you attempt to push yourself too far, the chains of your own bonds will destroy you.”

Akira nodded, and walked towards the attendants, gripping at the bars as he stared down at the list Justine offered to him.

“I’ll set up the guillotines, Justine,” Caroline said. “Hurry up and make your choice, inmate!”

-x-

From the higher vantage point of the overpass compared to the street, the people milling about Shibuya’s central street were just a moving, colourful mass. Akira stared down at them through the windows that led along the walls of the overpass, leaning against the bars of the railing.

“Yo,” Ryuji said, and Akira looked over to see him walking towards him, one hand in his pocket and the other raised in greeting. “Ann and Kitagawa not here yet?”

Akira shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “Ann texted me though – she and Yusuke are just going to meet us down in the subway.”

Ryuji frowned. “Why didn’t she just put that in the group chat?” He asked, and Morgana let out an evil chuckle as he poked his head out from Akira’s bag.

“She probably just didn’t want to deal with you,” he said airily. “I can’t blame her for that – Lady Ann truly does have good sense.”

“I – hey!” Ryuji snapped, offense pitching his voice high as he stepped in close, leaning down so he was nose to nose with Morgana. “Take that back, you stupid cat!”

A growl echoed out. “I am _not_ a cat!”

Akira stepped back, thankful for the fact that having Morgana in his bag meant that he could just remove him from the situation. “Can we…not argue?” He asked. “We’re about to head into Mementos, and I’d rather not have us at each other’s throats while we’re down there.”

“…yeah,” Ryuji said, and rubbed a hand across the back of his head. “Sorry, guys.”

Morgana let out a _hmph_ , but after considering Ryuji for a moment, nodded. “For the sake of the team, I will accept your apology,” he said.

“Gee, thanks,” Ryuji muttered.

“Come on, you two,” Akira sighed. “Let’s just get down to the others.”


	3. Violence & Victory

The air of Mementos was lighter than it had been the last time they had entered it – the pollen warnings of the last few weeks had finally tapered off, and the oppressive sensation caused in the Metaverse by the irritable countenance of the general population had pretty much vanished.

“Well, this means that the enemies here shouldn’t be as strong as they have been, right?” Ann grinned at them, as Yusuke beside her was absorbed in looking up and down himself and picking at the clothes that had formed in the Metaverse alongside his mask. “That’s a lot better for Yusuke’s first time in real combat.”

“I must agree,” Yusuke said, looking up at them with his tail still gripped in one hand, blinking from behind the eye holes of his mask and proving that he had, indeed, been listening. “Back in Madarame’s Palace, I was caught up in the heat of the moment – before we make our way back in for Madarame’s heart, I would appreciate some time to grow…used to my new abilities.”

Ryuji walked over to throw an arm over Yusuke’s shoulder, and Yusuke stiffened for a moment – probably in surprise. “ _Heat_ of the moment, huh?” He grinned, the smile visible from the side by the position of his jaw under his mask – “more like the _chill_ of it, considering you’re our new resident ice guy.” He winked over his shoulder at Akira. “Looks like he’ll be taking over Jack’s job,” Ryuji said, referencing one of the personas Akira had fused that he had been quite fond of using.

“That’s good,” Morgana said, as Akira shrugged, a faint smile playing about his lips when Yusuke sent him a questioning look and not-so-subtly shoved Ryuji’s arm off of him. “The more elemental bases we can cover in general, the less Joker has to cover on his own – and less of a chance that he’ll exhaust his spirit trying to call on too many different personas.”

Now everyone was looking at him, worry in their eyes, as if wondering if he had been suffering this entire time and hadn’t mentioned it to them at all. Once more, he shrugged.

Ann sighed. “I’ve barely known you for more than a month, and already I can tell this is just so _you_ , Akira,” she said, shaking her head – but even though her tone was exasperated, she was smiling.

“That’s our leader for you,” Ryuji said.

“Truly,” Yusuke agreed. “I have not even held a full conversation with Akira yet, and I can confirm this with one hundred percent certainty.”

“Can we – can we please focus on the shadows?” Akira asked, slightly desperate and definitely _not blushing_ as his friends grinned at him wickedly. “I mean, that’s why we’re here, right?”

“Oh, I’m sure we could multi-task,” Ann said, and Ryuji let out a whoop of laughter as Yusuke hummed in agreement.

“Morgana, please transform,” Akira muttered. “ _Quickly_.”

Yusuke blinked, and Akira remembered that they hadn’t really explained _everything_ to the newest member of the Phantom Thieves in the time that had passed since they had collected him.

“Transform?” Yusuke asked, a slight frown flickering across his face. “I’m not quite sure I understand your meaning –” he paused, and Akira bit back a laugh. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, the cat just became a vehicle.”

“I am _not_ a cat!” As always when in Mementos and in bus-form when summoning the power of belief created by the people and Studio Ghibli in order to transform, his voice didn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular – just echoing around Mementos and straight into their ears.

“I don’t know,” Ryuji teased. “I mean, if it looks like a cat, and sounds like a cat, and turns into a bus like a cat…”

Morgana growled – while he was in his bus form, it sounded like an engine revving up, and Akira had to bite back a laugh.

Yusuke was still staring at Morgana. “A cat that transforms into a vehicle…” He clenched one fist. “That is an idea I have never even considered…animals turning into cars…that could be the basis for an interesting series of images.” He looked up at Morgana with a fervour burning in his eyes. Akira could have sworn the blue of Morgana’s headlamps flickered and dimmed nervously. “Please, allow me to draw your majesty!”

“Have you found yourself a new muse, Yusuke?” Ann giggled, and Yusuke turned to look at her with his eyes wide.

“Do not mistake me, Takamaki-san,” he said. “Your visage is still one I _must_ capture on canvas, but…” he trailed off. “ _Cat bus,_ ” he emphasised.

Ann waved him off. “I totally understand, Yusuke,” she said. “And please, call me Ann – I mean, the rest of us are already calling you by _your_ first name, you can absolutely do the same with ours.”

Yusuke tilted his head at her. Strands of his hair fell across the pure white porcelain of his mask, and Akira wondered at the shy confusion he could see light up in those eyes. “If you are certain…?” The tone of his voice was hesitant as it trailed off into a question.

“Dude, of course!” Ryuji said. “I mean, fuck that formality shit. Who cares about that with friends?”

Even more so than he had in Madarame’s Palace, first taking in the bizarre world he had found himself in and then the whole ugly truth of his teacher, Yusuke looked completely floored. “…friends?” He asked. “Is…that how you see me? As a…friend?”

Akira wasn’t a very tactile person – not with a lot of people, not until he knew them _really well_. Even then, _they_ were usually the ones to establish contact; like Ryuji, tossing a casual arm over his shoulders.

But in that moment, he just really, _really_ wanted to hug Yusuke.

He wasn’t alone in that desire, apparently – Ann’s eyes were suspiciously shiny under her mask and even Ryuji had fallen still.

“That’s what you _are,_ ” Ann said. “Yusuke, you’re our _friend_.”

Yusuke just _stared_ at her. “I –” he bowed his head. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Ann laughed. “Yusuke, you don’t need to _thank us_ for being your friends,” she said. “We just are because we _want_ to be, not because we want your gratitude.”

“Yeah,” Ryuji said, and rubbed a hand through his hair, as if he was feeling awkward with the whole situation he found himself in. “Like. _Dude_.”

“We’re just happy to have you with us, Yusuke,” Akira said. “Want to sit in the front with me?”

And just like that, the slightly sombre mood was broken – Yusuke perked up, his head lifting from where he had had it bowed, eyes lighting up and the tail on his belt wagging faintly, Ann and Ryuji letting out protests at the idea of being left together in the back.

Akira grinned, and ran for the bus, gesturing for Yusuke to hurry up and follow him before the other two realised they could spend their time making for the passenger seat instead of bickering –

“Hey!” Morgana yelped, the bus rocking gently from side to side. “Be careful with me! I’m not _actually_ a car you can just beat up without a thought, you know!”

-x-

Akira wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten himself into his current situation.

Well, no, that was a lie – he knew _exactly_ how he’d gotten trapped where he was; Mishima and Ryuji were far too ‘persuasive’ for their own good. Persuasive meaning, of course, that they were equally hard headed and unable to hear ‘no’ as an answer.

Not that he’d even managed to _say_ no in the first place – he’d been too stunned to even respond verbally to Ryuji’s suggestion of calling a maid service before Mishima had come in with eager responses of _yes let’s do it_.

He stared at the corner of the bare room across from him, where a cobweb was gathering dust, ignoring the excited chatter of the other two as best he could, wishing desperately he could be _anywhere_ else but there. Ann had shot him a text earlier – they could have studied at the diner together. Hell, he could have been her pack mule and gone shopping with her. He could have practiced making coffee with Sojiro, or…something. _Anything_.

Part of his reluctance was just that…calling a maid service honestly felt more than a bit skeevy, especially considering the fact that they weren’t actually calling for a maid to do her actual job of cleaning a place in costume – rather, just to ogle at her.

The rest was pretty much just the fact that while he was on probation he didn’t really want to risk getting caught doing anything that could be considered even _slightly_ illegal, like a high school student calling on a service usually used by…older men.

He hadn’t really been paying much attention to the specific words the other two were speaking, or the path the conversation had taken while he’d been lost in a maze of his own thoughts, but enough of his mind was turned towards his friends that he heard when their voices changed from excited to nervous. Akira looked up, to see both Ryuji and Mishima’s faces had become pinched with worry.

 _This was_ your _idea,_ he felt like pointing out when Ryuji voiced that _maybe_ this hadn’t been such a great idea, after all – but Akira was a good friend, and a firm believer in the fact that it was already too late to turn back, given that they had already called up the service and transferred funds, and so kept quiet, rather than rubbing salt deeper into the wounds.

Of course, such patience and generosity faded pretty quickly after the maid arrived, and Mishima and Ryuji lunged for the balcony.

 _Traitors,_ he thought venomously, and tensed as he felt the maid sidle up behind him. He was tall enough that in casual clothing and without a good look at his face, she hadn’t realised he was a high school student yet – he could tell that just by the way she was talking to him, a high girlish laugh emphasising almost every word and a lilting _Master!_ tacked on to the end of sentences and questions – but the moment he turned around, she’d see his youth in his face. And if she made a complaint and _remembered_ his face, there was a rather large possibility that some sort of disciplinary authority would come after him, and since he was on probation…

He _really_ didn’t want to risk the police hearing about this, even if he thought Sojiro _probably_ wouldn’t have all that much of a problem with it – if anything, he’d probably get a laugh out of it.

Panicking, and wishing he had dove for the balcony alongside his friends before the maid had entered and thus just left her thinking she’d been sent out on a prank job, meaning she’d leave but still get paid for the trouble, Akira blurted out the first thing that came to mind in response to the question the maid asked him.

“I’m a dad,” he blurted out, and felt like punching himself in the face the moment the words had left his mouth.

And then he turned around, and the maid was Kawakami-sensei, and his own stupidity was the last thing on his mind.

-x-

“So, this is the calling card?”

Ann leant over Ryuji’s shoulder as he presented the card to them from underneath the cover of his hoodie, Yusuke next to him acting as another blockade to prevent anyone else on the overpass catching sight of it. The style and language of it were still recognisably similar to the first one, which Ryuji had made by himself – but Yusuke’s help had guided it to look even more professional, each letter and line on the logo and in the text polished to an aesthetically pleasing style.

Akira, leaning up against the railing by himself, squinted at the card and then nodded. “Looks good,” he said. “Looks nice. Looks clean.”

“Looks like it will trigger exactly what we need in Madarame’s Shadow.” Morgana’s voice was smug, satisfied, his head poking out of Akira’s back alongside his tail, curled like he was about to pounce. “Once he sees this, the Treasure will manifest.”

“And all I have to do is make sure he sees it?” There was uncertainty in Yusuke’s voice, but determination in his eyes. Akira grinned, feeling excitement bubble up inside despite the reservations he had built up since taking on Kamoshida – that they’d all built up. There was something about the Metaverse, about Mementos and _especially_ the Palaces, that made him feel alive in a way he hadn’t since he’d danced in a small town studio beside his mother. In the Metaverse, he was free, and it was _wonderful_.

“Right,” Ryuji nodded. “’Cept _I’ll_ be the one dropping the cards around the exhibit. You’re gonna be right by Madarame’s side until we’ve made _sure_ he’s seen the card.”

“And then we head into his Palace while he’s still on alert.” Ann nodded, her ponytails rippling down her back with the movement. She, too, looked like she was almost vibrating with excitement, her eyes lit up like they did when she saw cake. It made sense to Akira – more than anyone else, Ann had been the first to find _fun_ in the Metaverse after they’d dealt with Kamoshida; every time she called out for her persona to set an enemy ablaze, her cry of _Dance, Carmen!_ was a cheerful one, filled with laughter and life. “We’ve only got this one chance, so we have to stick to the plan and see it through.”

“Of course,” Yusuke said, with one swift nod. “Then, let us begin.”

Akira pushed off from where he reclined, and gestured for Ann to follow him. “After Ryuji drops off the card, we’ll be waiting by the entrance to Madarame’s exhibit,” he said. “After he’s seen the card, come to see us and we’ll head for his atelier to enter his Palace.”

As one, they all nodded.

Morgana grinned. “Move out!” he said.

-x-

After sending the calling card to Kamoshida, entering his Palace had almost been like walking into a field after a summer shower – the air heavy and hard to move through, just without the actual humidity. They’d run straight to the treasure and then straight into a majorly hard fight, so he hadn’t really had time to figure out if what he was feeling was for real or just in his own head, but activating the Nav and feeling the last bits of the real world bleed away in favour of the Metaverse, he could tell that it had for sure happened.

“Oh.” Ann’s words came out slightly breathless, and when he glanced over at her, her eyes were wide through the holes of her mask. “Oh, wow. It isn’t just me – the air feels different here somehow, now, doesn’t it?”

“I have to agree,” Yusuke said. “I have not spent as much time in either Mementos or Palaces as any of you have, but something about the atmosphere of this place…feels more oppressive than it was the last time we were here.”

Morgana nodded. “Didn’t you sense it when Madarame read the calling card?” He grinned, sharp and eager. “The entire Palace is on high alert to reflect its ruler. Of course, that’s nothing to the Phantom Thieves.”

“Hell yeah!” Ryuji swung his pipe over one shoulder and gave the rest of the party a thumbs up. “We’ve got this handled. Some old art geezer can’t be any worse than Kamoshida if it comes down to it, right? I mean, the pervert douche was an ex-Olympian.”

“We’re not going into this looking for a fight,” Akira reminded him dryly. “We’re going in for the Treasure.”

“Well, yeah,” Ryuji said. “But we weren’t looking for a fight with Kamoshida, either, and look at what that got us.”

“Point,” Akira said, bowing his head in acknowledgement.

“Forgive me for asking,” Yusuke said, looking between the three of them. “But what do you mean?” He tilted his head. “We have already secured the route, yes? With that, is there truly any reason to fight?”

Akira paused, and stared at Yusuke, before sending a pleading look to Ann. She was…better at this stuff than either he or Ryuji were. Probably.

She stared back, unflinching. There was a fire in her eyes and a curl to her lips that had him feeling slightly wary – he rocked back on his heels and resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair and laugh nervously. When she turned away to address Yusuke, relief flooded him, but the slight tension building in the back of his mind didn’t go away as Arsene whispered for him to be wary of Carmen’s fire in battle with a rustling of feathers brushing against his conscious thoughts.

“Madarame’s Shadow is the ruler of this Palace,” she explained to him gently. “So, if it comes down to it, he’ll probably be a _really_ difficult fight.”

Yusuke blinked. “We…may have to… _fight_ Madarame?”

“ _Not_ if we’re careful about it,” Morgana hissed. “And the longer we stand out here _talking_ about it, the higher chance of one the Shadows spotting us there is! The entire Palace is on high alert now that Madarame knows that we’re after him. So let’s _go_.”

There still seemed to be a wary sort of hesitation showing in Yusuke’s eyes and along the tension in the lines of his shoulders, but he nodded shortly. “Yes,” he said. “I am ready.”

And with that, he stalked forwards – they’d switched him out with Morgana so all their attackers were on the frontlines with Morgana acting as support and healing from a distance. For a moment, Akira hovered uncertainly at the edge of the carpark that was placed by the museum that was Madarame’s Palace, staring at his friends back.

Yusuke understood that what they were doing was right, and necessary. But…unlike Kamoshida, whom all of them had hated and felt no fondness for whatsoever…he still held a piece of his heart, however small, that belonged to Madarame. He felt as if he _owed_ the man for taking him in – had seen him as some sort of father figure for most of his life. Even after all he had suffered because of Madarame, Yusuke couldn’t just let those memories and feelings go.

Akira got that, he really did – but there was nothing he could do about it, really, other than hope that if they really had to fight Madarame, Yusuke would be fine.

And if he wasn’t…well. He had to have been given the power that those in the Velvet Room called ‘the Wild Card’ for a reason. If it came down to it, he would just have to cover Yusuke’s spot in a fight for him.

-x-

 _Hold!_ Carmen’s voice was an echoing cry that hissed out like the crackling flames that wreathed her. _Elemental attacks will not help you here._

Ann nearly tripped over her own feet as she pulled back from where she’d raised a hand to press against her mask, feeling power – _her_ power – thrum through her as she called on the searing warmth of Agi. She felt cold as she cancelled the attack, letting her hand drop and feeling Carmen’s bright, vivid presence recede to the back of her mind.

She bit her lip. With the cognitive powers of the Metaverse working to their favour even in a Palace controlled by another’s Shadow, due to the protection granted to them by their personas, her physical attacks were far from _weak_ – but Madarame was no ordinary Shadow. He was on a whole other level than the enemies they had been fighting in Mementos – than Kamoshida, either, which made next to no sense.

She blamed Ryuji entirely. He had totally jinxed it with his stupid words about how an ‘old geezer’ couldn’t be harder than an ‘ex-Olympian.’

“Gotcha,” she said anyway. “Thank you, Carmen.”

Akira, probably hearing her words, glanced over at her. His eyes were dark from behind his mask, but that same warmth he’d always exuded for as long as she had known him was still visibly _there_ , even if – for a stranger – he would cut a cold, uncaring figure while in his phantom clothes.

She answered the concern that shone out of those eyes with a smile that was…mostly sincere. Strong and difficult or not, Madarame’s attacks came slowly. Maybe, even though he had no qualms about stealing work or abusing students, the idea of actually killing people himself, with his own hands and power, was abhorrent enough to him that it had effected even his Shadow? She’d heard something about that in one of her classes, once, she thought – that when faced with actual death, not just the abstract idea of it, people’s brains just _stalled_.

He nodded shortly, than turned his attention back to the fight – likely, one of his personas had already whispered to him what Carmen had told her; given that Ryuji and Yusuke were also sticking strictly to physical attacks, Captain Kidd and Goemon must have been paying attention too.

However, unlike Ryuji and Yusuke, who were naturally heavy hitters, Akira was more like her – relying on speed and flexibility and the power of his personas than his own attacks. And just like her, he seemed to be struggling with the fact that elemental attacks were next to useless. He was simply dodging past most of Madarame’s attacks and dancing in and out of range when he geared up for another attack.

 _Knives_ , she cursed. Out of all of them, Akira had the least amount of range available to him in a fight that didn’t involve the use of a persona.

And then, she felt like slamming a fist into her head and grinding it through her skull until she could actually beat away at her brain.

“Joker!” She called out, and winced as he instinctively turned to her, a sort of panic in his eyes as if he was worried she was in danger and calling out for help (that time in Mementos where a group of Shadows had swarmed them and managed to hold her captive was going to stick with both her and the others for a long time – she had felt so helpless, and none of the boys had been really willing to let her on the frontlines again. Ryuji had even walked her home, when in the real world they all knew that, logically, the danger of such a thing happening again had passed. Ever since then, they had all…not exactly _hovered_ over her, but had definitely been more aware and protective of her in battle); Ann couldn’t hold back a cry as the strange, warped teeth of one of the… ‘Madarame Portraits’ snapped at his side.

Akira yelled out too, and recoiled immediately away from Madarame blindly – stumbling straight into Yusuke and Ryuji who had rushed forward to pull him out of the enemy’s reach.

Her hand was pressed to her mask, her fingers digging under the edge of it to press into the skin around her eyes, her nails sharp and biting against her flesh. Power flooded through her, heated and roaring as Carmen answered her desperate call.

“Dia!” She cried out and fell to her knees beside Akira, slumped up against Ryuji’s chest – Yusuke stood over all of them, sword drawn in defence. Blue light bloomed around them, filaments swirling around Akira and swarming to the wound in his side – somehow the jacket he wore hadn’t torn, even though the teeth had clearly bitten through to flesh, since there was blood soaking through.

She swallowed, and shook her head as the magic did its work – within a minute, the only proof that he had been wounded was said blood, pooled beneath them on the floor; soaked and smeared across all of their clothes. Ann had never been so happy for the waterproof material that made up her skin tight phantom suit than she had been in that moment, looking down and realising she was kneeling in a pool of her friends blood.

She stood up quickly, and the others followed her a little slowly – Ryuji gently pulling Akira up and Akira pressing a hand gingerly to his side as if to test just how healed his wound was. Just in case she hadn’t managed to put enough power into it the first time, Ann raised one hand up to tap against her mask, feeling Carmen still lurking at the surface of her mind, ready to prepare another Dia.

“I’m fine,” Akira said, sending her a weak smile after testing his weight. “Really.”

Ann scowled. She wanted to yell at him for even daring to focus his attention on _anything_ else when they were up against such a tough enemy – but already both he and Ryuji were both shifting to face Madarame, who had not been idle while Akira was down; Morgana and Yusuke had barely managed to keep him off of them.

Well. She’d just have to yell at him later, then.

“We have guns,” she said unslinging her whip and brandishing it in one hand as her other one brought her gun up. “We should use them.”

Akira’s smile was bright and vicious, like the edge of one of his knives shining under the light of a burst of Carmen’s fire. “Good idea,” he purred. “I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it.”

“Because I’m _smarter_ than you!” Ann cried out, and danced into range of Madarame – her whip swung out, capturing one of his eyes in its grip, and she bared her teeth as she held it there _fast_. Her aim wasn’t the greatest, which was why the boys had decided to get her a gun just meant for spraying wildly and hoping for the best – but that didn’t mean she couldn’t tip the odds in her favour. Wrapped in tightly braided leather, the eye couldn’t move, and Ann was quick to empty every bullet she had loaded into it. It faded into dust, turning black and crumbling away to nothing like it had rotted under the force of incredibly focused entropy, but she didn’t let her guard down. If they didn’t destroy the rest of the portraits soon, it would be back, and they’d never get to the _real_ Madarame.

She lost herself in the rhythm of the fight, dodging and attacking and reloading her gun. There was a reason she called out for Carmen to dance, and it wasn’t just because she’d watched too much magical girl anime as a kid. The battle _was_ a dance – at least that’s what it felt like to her, and watching Akira move in fights, he _had_ to feel the same way, too – why else would he put in so many needless flips and turns to his movements and attacks?

On her right, Yusuke slammed his blade into the portrait of the wide, snapping mouth, cutting it clean in two. It fizzed into dust like the others had, and then Madarame – the old man, not the collection of distorted, twisted paintings – was standing before them again, a pool of black, tar-like ink bubbling up at his feet.

Ann’s eyes widened. That movement of the ink – that was how Madarame had shifted forms the last time; sinking down into that liquid darkness and returning as four pain in the ass portraits. That bubbling had signalled the change – but it had taken _way_ longer for him to be able to do that again the time before, and none of them had been expecting this time to be so quick. From the corner of her eyes she saw Ryuji stiffen, saw Akira rush forward with his gun at the ready.

But – perhaps fittingly – it was Yusuke who reached Madarame first.

For a moment – one brief, horrible moment – Ann was convinced that Yusuke was going to run the old man’s Shadow through. His sword, as sharp as Akira could get him and then polished to a shine, was completely bare, the blade gleaming as he held it out towards Madarame. Yusuke’s face was twisted with a rage she could see even with his features mostly hidden behind his mask – what Madarame had revealed about his mother before the fight had clearly let loose the icy cold winds of war within him.

But to Ann’s incredibly great relief, Yusuke simply held the sharp edge of his blade against the Shadow’s throat – and then, with Madarame’s Shadow instinctively freezing still, he punched him. Hard. And right in the side of the head, too.

Ryuji whistled, low and impressed. Before he could open his mouth any wider and shove his foot even deeper into it, Ann shot him a dirty look ­– _shut up_ , she mouthed at him, and confusion flickered across his face for a brief moment before he tracked her gaze to Yusuke.

He was trembling, standing over Madarame’s fallen form with both fists clenched, and the sword he still held in one cutting wildly through the air as the shaking travelled down his arm. Akira, the closest of them, was the first to reach Yusuke, and he gently pulled the sword from his grasp, letting it fall to the floor with an echoing clatter.

A comforting warmth followed by a gentle coolness like stepping into the water on a nice day suffused her, and Ann blinked and looked down to realise the light of a Dia spell had surrounded her – Ryuji and the other two as well, so it was Media, then.

She smiled towards Morgana, who was the only one amongst them to hold that skill, unless Akira had managed to collect a mask that gave him that power as well and just hadn’t mentioned it – she and Carmen had been pushing and pushing themselves to get their more supportive skills stronger, but they were made more for offense; all venom and fire and an allure that lulled unsuspecting enemies to their final sleep. It still helped the team, but not necessarily in exactly the way _she_ wanted to.

“Thanks, Mona,” she said, keeping her voice low.

Morgana grinned at her, and something about knowing him in this form, in the Metaverse, just made it easier to pick up all these little nuances in the real world, too – not just the verbal communication but the body language. Ann was pretty sure she was almost fluent in cat by now.

Ryuji had paused as Morgana worked his magic through Zorro, and now hovered between the two halves of the team, looking uncertain. It seemed to Ann that Akira was talking to Yusuke – his lips were moving and Yusuke’s head was turned towards him – but his voice was so quiet that she couldn’t make out the words.

The moment seemed private, so she gestured for Ryuji to stand with her, and he did so with relief lighting up his face; together, the three of them waited for their final two to come back to him.

Barely a minute passed before tremors rocked the ground – starting faint but then building up into shakes that threw off Ann’s centre of gravity – and she looked up to see that Yusuke was holding onto the Sayuri painting that Madarame had held, staring down at the Shadow with an unreadable look on his face.

Akira jogged up to them, looking directly at Morgana. “This place is going down like Kamoshida’s did now that we hold the treasure, right?” He asked.

Morgana nodded. “But of course,” he said airily. “I suppose you’ll be wanting a getaway car?”

Akira nodded once, short and sweet and to the point – just like Akira himself. “Please,” he said.

Ryuji called out to Yusuke as they all clambered into the bus, who was still staring down at Madarame. “C’mon, dude!” He yelled. “We need to get out of here before the damn place collapses around us!”

Yusuke turned towards the bus slowly – then nodded, and began to walk over.

Looking out the window, Ann almost thought she saw Madarame call out something to Yusuke – that was definitely his name he’d called out – but Yusuke didn’t look back or slow, and then he was in the bus, and they were driving away, out of the museum and into the light of the real world.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she blinked. Morgana was a cat once more. She was back in her everyday clothing. She looked down at her screen – the Metaverse Nav was open.

 _Destination deleted,_ the automated voice said.


	4. Rest & Recovery

Akira was exhausted – even Sojiro had been able to tell that; when he’d walked into Leblanc he’d just sighed and shooed him upstairs with an order to sleep before he collapsed onto the café floor – but even though his bed was calling to him with the sweet siren song of a full night’s sleep, he resisted. In the Metaverse or no (an important distinction, since moving in the cognitive world was different to moving in reality), after all the activity he’d done today, he was going to stretch it out before he collapsed onto his mattress – if he didn’t, he’d regret it the next day; growing up a dancer’s son had taught him that. And even after his mother’s accident – once his dad had enrolled him into the local school he had signed up for the gymnastics team. Akira had always like to be caught in the flow of movement.

(Besides, if his hunch was right, the moment he closed his eyes he would open them again, and find himself in the Velvet Room. While he usually had the patience to deal with Igor’s cryptic words and just _deal with_ Caroline and Justine in general, at that moment he wasn’t feeling up to it.

The soft thudding sound of Morgana’s paws on the table drew his attention, and he looked over to see his feline friend watching him curiously, head cocked to one side. Akira supposed he might have made an interesting picture – one foot resting on the table as he massaged his hands down his calf and stretched his body out so he was bent almost double parallel to said leg.

“What are you doing?” Morgana asked. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Yeah,” Akira said. “But mostly I’m just aching. And I’ll be feeling it even more tomorrow unless I deal with this now.”

Two slow, luminous cat blinks. Akira wondered if cats with blue eyes were actually a thing that existed, or if that was just more proof that Morgana was unusual. He wasn’t really, and had never been, a cat person. He’d never had anything _against_ them – he’d just never been very interested in owning a pet of his own.

“Okay then,” Morgana said, and curled up on the table, tail flicking over his nose. “But you should sleep after this.”

 _I’m onto you,_ Akira thought, turning his attention back to his stretches. _I know your master plan, and if I wake up with you on my chest again, I’m going to push you onto the floor_.

For fifteen minutes, his room was silent – just the ambient sounds of Sojiro downstairs in Leblanc echoing up; the clinking of cutlery on porcelain and water running out of the tap. It was soothing, and Akira felt the last remnants of his tension bleed out of him as he finished up his stretches.

He straightened up, and stumbled over onto his bed. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and clasped his hands under his chin, thinking on what Madarame had said at the end despite himself.

 _A black mask_ , he thought. Yusuke had heard it too, but had been too lost in his own thoughts and problems for Akira to push him on it too much. However, at their meeting spot at the overpass, drinking bubble tea Ann had bought for them, when they’d discussed the events of the Palace that day, he’d made sure to mention it to Ann and Ryuji. Unfortunately, they’d had even less clue for what it could have meant, except that Madarame was probably a liar.

It didn’t _feel_ like it to Akira though. The fear and desperation in the Shadow’s eyes – he’d been telling the truth (or at least what _he knew_ to be the truth), definitely.

A light dip in the mattress next to him, and he looked down wearily, unable to summon even the will to tell Morgana to get off of his bed.

“Lay down, Akira,” Morgana said, his eyes dark with worry. “ _Sleep_.”

He admitted to himself that there was nothing that could be done at that moment – while half asleep and far more than half clueless – and collapsed back without further complaint. His pillows were soft beneath his head, and even Morgana’s small, soft warmth curled up next to him was a little bit welcomed.

He felt as if he was asleep before his eyes had even fully closed.

And of course, when he blinked them open once more, he was somewhere else entirely.

Akira glared at the blue stone that made up the ceiling of his cell. Couldn’t these people just let him _sleep_?

He could feel Caroline’s eye glaring at him through the bars. “Get _up_ , inmate,” she snapped, and sighing internally (but not externally, because he definitely did not need the kind of pain _that_ would bring him in his life) he rolled out of the stiff cot and hobbled over to the bars.

Even though he didn’t like to think on it too long and hard, he thought it said something about who he was as a person that he could now move so easily while wrapped up in heavy iron chains, weighed down by the ball they were clasped to on the other end. Probably nothing good – what kind of normal person would adapt to such a situation so quickly?

“Your rehabilitation draws ever closer to completion,” Igor said, his low voice echoing through the room like the earthquake that had shaken Madarame’s Palace as it fell. Akira still had vivid memories of that event burned into his mind, and he shuddered a little as he heard the Master of the Velvet Room speak. There was always something a little… _off_ about Igor – his grin, his silence, the fact that Akira was pretty sure no one in this room with the exception of himself would count as anything even _close_ to human – but it was easier to ignore the disturbing sensations that skittered over Akira’s skin when around him when he interacted with Caroline and Justine alone. Igor’s silent grin was a creepy watcher in the room. His attention turned directly on Akira was a spotlight he couldn’t get away from and his entire body tensed like he was expecting to dodge an attack. “You have done well.”

Akira remained silent. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that – Justine looked over at him pointedly. “Our master is pleased,” she said softly. “Be thankful, inmate.”

“Yeah!” Caroline chimed in, tapping her baton against her leg, and if Akira wasn’t so damn scared of her, he’d almost think the two of them were _cute_. “Feel honoured, inmate – our master offers you praise.” She looked him up and down with one appraising eye. “I suppose even you can do something right once in a while.”

With the gazes of both of the wardens fixed on him – seemingly both pleased, if only slightly – Akira could feel the bond of Strength the three of them shared shiver to life with a rattle of chains constricting around his heart.

Rakshasa stirred in the back of his mind, reaching for the links of that bond, but faded away just as quickly. Now was not the time for those chains to grow tighter, more binding – and besides, unlike the others he held a bond with, the residents of the Velvet Room seemed to know _exactly_ when those links in a chain grew lesser, drawing them closer. If he tried to shatter some of the distance that still laid between himself and the twins right now, they’d probably kill him – after all, Igor was still talking, and if there was one thing the two wardens held similar in personality, it was their complete devotion to the… _thing_ they called master.

(Akira hesitated to call Igor a man. He was just too… _Other_ for that.)

“Oh, I’m honoured,” he said, and was honestly impressed with how little sarcasm bled through into the words.

Caroline narrowed her eye at him, clearly weighing the sincerity of his words, and he offered her a small smile before turning his attention back to Igor.

“Is that all you called me in here to say?” He asked, careful to keep his tone polite.

“No,” Igor answered, and his grin seemed to widen. “That man’s remarks held something rather concerning. It seems another has made their way into the Metaverse.”

Akira froze for a moment – he’d known that those in the Velvet Room were watching him; how else would they know when to pull him into this place through sleep? But…watching him _that_ closely? The shivers were running across his skin again, sending ice down his spine, and he narrowed his eyes at Igor. The Master of the Velvet Room was cryptic at best, but if he was the one bringing the topic up, maybe he’d be more willing to give Akira some _solid_ information?

“So it’s true, then…” he said. “Any idea who it could be?”

“That is beyond my knowledge,” Igor said, and even though his words and tone were apologetic, his grin didn’t falter. Akira wondered if it was even possible for his face to relax from that position – wherever the Velvet Room was, it wasn’t the Metaverse, so the cognitive powers that be didn’t magically clear up his eyesight; he squinted across the room at Igor, but without his glasses on he just couldn’t see him well enough to gauge whether he had lips or not – all he could pick was the blinding white of teeth. “But regardless, your rehabilitation is progressing smoothly. That much, I can say for certain.”

Akira nodded once, and Igor inclined his head in turn.

“May your devotion to this path grow even deeper,” he said. “I have high hopes for you.”

The chains around his heart that led to Arsene tightened, and Akira shivered as he followed that bond along to the one that waited at the other end – Igor. Links snapped, and the chain reformed, smaller but stronger than before. He breathed out, and slumped weakly against the bars of his cell, the iron cold and biting against his palm as he gripped it just to stay upright. He wasn’t quite sure why the bond – or contract, he supposed – he held with Igor took so much out of him when even the twin’s didn’t; maybe because the bond was formed of his own Arcana?

The soft whispering of rustling feathers filled his mind as Arsene reached out for the chains that held his heart in a vice grip and wrapped his wings around them. Out of sight, out of mind, and cloaked once more in shadows, Akira felt he could breathe again. Carefully, conscious of how his hands shook, he let go of the bars and straightened.

Looking up, two eyes burning gold met his.

“Take a break for now, inmate,” Caroline said – her voice still harsh and grating but her words themselves some of the kindest she had ever spoken to him.

“Indeed,” Justine agreed. “Return now to your brief rest – we will see you again soon.”

The blue light of the room that seemed to come from no one source in particular dimmed, as if to coax him to do as Justine had ordered. He nearly laughed – he was exhausted enough that no one had to tell him twice, especially considering how much he genuinely dislike being in the Velvet Room.

He walked back over to the cold slab he supposed they called a bed and reclined back, ignoring the weight of his chains and how the clanked as he lay back. Lying in an almost amusing imitation of the same position his body was in back in his bed in the real world, Akira closed his eyes, and slept.

-x-

Ryuji was pretty sure his mum was ready to stage an intervention for him.

For what, she probably had no clue, either – but Rin Sakamoto could see through her son so well it was almost scary. And he hadn’t exactly been as careful as he could have been, coming home late and exhausted and with more cash weighing down his pockets then there had been when he had left in the morning.

Come to think of it, given those rumours that had been flying around of students getting scammed and blackmailed into working with gangs in Shibuya, Ryuji’s mother probably thought he’d gone and gotten himself tangled up with the yakuza.

It was enough to make him want to punch a wall, but he knew that that would just make her worry even more – never mind the fact that putting a fist through the plaster was nothing more than a good way to pile more bills up on his poor mother’s shoulders. She already put up with enough crap, more than anyone as good as her deserved, and so much of it was Ryuji’s fault – she didn’t need any more problems because of him.

He was filled with so much regret that today was a Monday, and that he had to get to school or make his mother worry even more – but they hadn’t been able to think of any other day than a Sunday to make a run for Madarame’s Treasure.

 _God_ , he was exhausted.

His mother sighed, and he looked up from where he had been staring blankly at his cereal to see her rubbing her temples as she looked down at the piles of paper sorted in front of her – bills, of course.

Ryuji grit his teeth. Worry had carved lines deep into her face and stress had her shoulders raised with tension. There was a huge part of him that just wanted to blame it all – blame everything – on his dad, but he knew that even if the financial stuff was because of his dad’s shit, anything piled on top of that was all _him_. His academic and disciplinary record weren’t exactly the greatest – he was just lucky he hadn’t gotten a mark that had landed him a criminal one yet, unlike Akira, the poor guy.

His phone buzzed in his bag, by his feet, but he ignored it. “What’s up?” He summoned a smile for his mother as she looked up – given all the extra shit he’d put her through just by coming home pretty late the night before, acting like nothing was wrong was the least he could do.

(He was going to have to figure out a way to start slipping his Mementos and Palace spoils into her purse more subtly, because just handing her the cash had gotten her suspicions on high alert. He wasn’t actually involved with a gang, or a bully ring, or anything that could be technically proven as illegal, but he doubted that really mattered to his mother’s conscience.)

The smile she gave him in return was just as weak as he was sure his own was, and made her entire face look about as tired as he felt. “Bills,” she sighed, gaze flicking back down to the piece of paper she held. “Bills, always bills.”

Ryuji could only nod – he’d already figured that out. “Anything I can help with?” His tone was just as flippant as it was in any conversation he would have on any day; he’d gotten good at hiding apprehension behind smiles, especially recently.

His mother laughed, her smile a little more genuine this time. “Not really,” she said. “And don’t you even _dare_ to suggest getting a job again,” she narrowed her eyes at him. “I know you want to help out, but you really need to focus on your grades, Ryuji – you can’t afford to get distracted by even a part time job; how else are you going to get into a good university?”

 _How else are you going to get a good job?_ He heard in those words. _How else are you going to claw your way out of this hole your father left us in?_

He gritted his teeth, _hard_ – he didn’t let his lips curl up and show that frustration, that anger, on the outside though. To his mother, to anyone and everyone that happened to look in on them at that moment (that asshole the world called ‘God,’ if he actually existed), he would look as if he was still smiling as he always was, no difference discernible.

“Ah, you know me,” he said. “Academics? Ain’t really my thing.”

“You can’t rely on your athletics to keep your scores up anymore, Ryu.” His mother’s voice was gentle and her eyes were sad. “You’ll never get anywhere in life but _here_ unless you try a little harder.”

The air felt tense, and slightly colder – his mother sighed, and shook her head. A frown played about her lips, and she squinted up at him from the pages she held. “What have you been doing with your phone, recently?” she asked. “The gap between this bill and the last is almost astronomical.”

Ryuji blinked, slightly thrown by the subject change. “Er,” he said. “I’ve been in chats a lot?” He was very careful not to make any mention of the Phan-Site, though the realisation that he’d been spending hours upon hours making his way through the forums everyday had him wincing and biting at his lip.

She blinked, too. “Have you made up with your friends in the track team?” she asked. “You’ve barely used up any data in months, but this…” she trailed off, and stared back down at the paper with her brows furrowed. Ryuji was, honestly, kind of scared to find out what kind of number could make his mum look like that. “We might have to see if we can change our plan,” she frowned. “Maybe get you one with unlimited data?”

“What? No, mum –” he reached out for the bill she held. She moved it away from him, and then they were just trapped in a standstill, her leaning almost out of her chair and his shirt nearly in his cereal. “Look, you don’t have to worry about that. I’ll just spend less time messing around in chatroom servers and the amount will go right back down.”

She goddamn _pouted_ at him. “And what, ignore your friends? Ryu, you’ve been alone for so long already, you really don’t have to worry about the money – I just want you to be happy –”

“Don’t worry about the money?” He stared at her. “Be _happy_? Mum – how can I not worry when you’re worrying? I just – it’s like, I can’t be happy if I know you’re not. And I know I’m just a kid, and it’s none of my business, but you’re my mum, and I _hate_ putting all this stress on you because of my shit.” He gritted his teeth. “I’m nearly an adult, I’ve gotta learn how to handle this stuff at some point, right? So c’mon – let me help!”

Her expression was severe, the lines of her face stiff and set as her mouth became a flat line. “No,” she said, speaking clearly and slowly. “I’m not letting you ruin your future by trading away your present. You don’t need to worry these things.” She sighed, and slumped deeper into her seat. “It’s Monday,” she said, and her voice was heavy, tired. “You need to get to school.”

Automatically, Ryuji’s eyes went to his phone as he pressed it to life – if he left then, he’d have just enough time to make his usual train.

At any other morning, he would’ve blown it off – fuck the train, fuck school; he didn’t care when the problems at home and with his mum were so much more important than some stupid grades and attendance records. But now…Akira and Ann caught the same connection to school as him. If he wasn’t there that morning, especially given how they’d spent the day before, they’d worry about him. And worry could lead to them finding out just how bad things were at home.

It wasn’t really like Ryuji was _hiding_ it – hell, given the fact that Yusuke was entirely dependent on his scholarship for schooling and they had no actual idea of what was going to happen with Madarame at that point, it wasn’t even like he had the worst home life of the group, financially – it was more just the fact that _if they knew_ , they’d want to help.

And they’d manage it, probably, because they were all amazing. Like they’d managed Kamoshida when all his attempts to do so had just ended in a broken leg and even more pain for his mother.

It was stupid, but…he didn’t want them picking up the slack on yet another one of his problems. This was his issue, and he wanted to solve it himself. He had his pride, after all – just like his mother had hers, staring him down stubbornly.

“Ugh, fine,” he said, and slung his bag over one shoulder, making for the door. “I’ll go to school. But don’t think this is over – I’ll get as many jobs as I have to in order to help you out, you know.”

Her smile was slightly bitter. “Oh, I know,” she said quietly. “You’ve always been your own brand of stubborn, after all.”

Ryuji grinned, and took the offered olive branch for what it was. “In a league of stubborn all my own,” he agreed. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

“Love you,” she smiled at him as he walked past her to the front door, deftly folding the paper she held in half so he couldn’t catch a peek of it even craning his head down over her lap. “Have a good day, Ryu.”

-x-

Akira had never thought he’d be glad that he’d found out his homeroom teacher was a maid through a series of horrible events that he wanted to just _scrub out of his memory_ (where was a persona with Forget when you really needed one?), but that morning, the day after claiming Madarame’s Treasure and watching his palace crumble, it was just the bare truth of the matter.

He was exhausted, and Kawakami must have picked up on that, because she’d been sending him concerned looks all morning, and had eventually lapsed from trying to teach new material to just rehashing last week’s lessons. From the mumblings of his classmates, they were confused by the subject change, but not complaining – neither was he, honestly; the chance to put his head down on his desk and get even a half hour more of sleep was wonderful.

So, he took full opportunity of it. Folding his arms underneath his head and turning his eyes into them to block out the early morning sun, his uniform still held that lingering scent of coffee. It was warm and comforting, and he took in a single deep breath, feeling his shoulders shift as his muscles relaxed, untensing.

When he woke up, blinking sleep away from his eyes, the sun was much higher in the sky – a warm, gentle weight pressed into his shoulder, and he turned his head to see delicately manicured nails at the end of hands calloused by the leather grip of a whip’s handle.

“Ann,” he said, and pressed his face into his sleeve as he yawned wide enough to crack his jaw. “What is it?”

“Kawakami-sensei just left,” she said. “I don’t know why she was okay with you sleeping during class – and it isn’t just that she didn’t see it, she was totally ignoring you – but I doubt the other teachers will be as lenient. Ushimaru-sensei will be here soon – you should try to wake up before he does.”

Akira blinked up at her. “I’m awake,” he said, confused.

The look she gave him was the definition of blank. “Sure, whatever you say, zombie boy,” she said, a grin playing about her lips. “I’m guessing the coffee in the air at Leblanc is the only reason you manage to stay awake at all on any given day, huh?”

“And you guys say _I’m_ the cat,” Morgana muttered. Akira pushed himself up from his desk and sat up, bumping his knees into the underside of his desk as he drew his chair in. Morgana yelped a little. “Hey!”

“I think we should go see Yusuke after school,” Ann said quietly, her voice nearly a whisper. “I don’t like the idea of him being alone in Madarame’s atelier, especially after what he said in the chat last night.”

 _He just keeps apologising,_ Akira recalled. _Just lies sobbing in bed_.

He could barely hold back a shudder. That did, honestly, sound like something horrible to just have to sit through and wait, particularly alone.

“I have a few hours to kill,” he agreed.

Ann smiled at him. “And now we just have to drag Ryuji out with us.”

Ushimaru-sensei entered the room, and called for everyone to sit down and settle down. A faint grumble travelled throughout the room, but by this point everyone was already used to their teacher’s own eccentricities. He was grumpy, but not the most observant person ever. So long as the ambient background chatter was kept to a certain low volume, he would never even notice.

Unless it was Morgana talking – he seemed to have a supernatural sense of hearing when it came to meows. In his desk, Morgana’s tail flicked agitatedly, a glare shining in his eyes. Having to be quite for a full class period – Morgana was pretty neutral towards most of the teachers that weren’t Kawakami, but he definitely disliked Ushimaru-sensei.

His phone buzzed, and he carefully thumbed it to life. Ann and Ryuji were talking about their plans for that afternoon – Yusuke entered the chat and told them all there was no reason for them to worry about him just as Akira started quickly tapping out a reply.

> **AK:** Yusuke, it has nothing to do with us being worried about you.  
>  **AK:** and everything to do with you being our friend.  
>  **RS:** dude. Exactly.  
>  **AT:** Yes!!!  
>  **YK:** …  
>  **YK:** I thank you. 


End file.
